Notschool.net - origins

It was a throwaway line really, in 1997, but one I'd been
reflecting on for some time. I was sitting in a goverrment Standards Task
Force - with the education ministers and senior civil servants, and a few
influential folk in the exciting early days of the New Labour government.
Someone in the room, I forget who, to prevent their discomfort (!) said some
very unkind things about the children who seemed to fall through every project
safety net, and fail. I bristled at this and said, rather forcefully for
me, that there was nothing wrong with the children, it was just the way that they
were treated, and if someone gave me 100 of these children and access to
some decent technology, I'd prove it.

After the meeting Rob Smith - a wonderful and visionary man
at the department -stopped me and asked if i was serious. I said I was, and
that it didn't need vast sums. indeed the money that educated children in
conventional school would be enough to do it in a new way. Rob to his immense
credit said OK, he'd support the idea - and he went on to be our champion for
several key formative years. Paul Jackson, School, Community and Business
Links officer at DfEE was a second hero and key supporter from within the
Department.

After that first meeting in 1997 Rob nagged me to respond with an
outline. I replied in February 1998:

I haven't forgotten you - As promised I did draft a
short couple of sides but wanted to run them past the Barnados people
and some others too - I'll fax the final over later today / tonight.
Pleased with your interest.

Prof Stephen Heppell

I got back to him rapidly, having taken an evolving set of
ideas around a number of interested agencies.
This was the initial plan - and it is fascinating looking back to see what
we did, and didn't do:

This is very much an initial ideas paper,
but with the intention of moving things rapidly forward rather
than starting a long debate. The pilot project proposed here should
start that debate (the mantra is that prototyping and pilots collect
needs and indicate direction.

Raison d‚étre

1 A substantial number of young students
are excluded in one way or another from institutional education:
school refusals, school phobics, school exclusiobns, children in
long term hospital care, profoundly physically impaired resident
at home, etc., etc. An eclectic mix but a substantial number of students.

The
population of elected home learners (parents having chosen to educate
children themselves at home) are another population altogether and
this pilot is not intended for them.

2 The cost of these students
and their fragmentary support structures is vast. Typically their
loss to the economy is even more expensive. Annual costs of support
may be £20,000 pa; factor in lost or reduced future income & tax
streams, with continued social costs over a lifetime over a
lifetime, and they will be vast.

3 Our work here at the lab - through
Schools OnLine, through our IPPR University for Industry pilot and
through other substantial projects, suggests that on-line learning
communities can be viable, social and effective

4 There is a substantial
pool of early retired teachers who have "had
enough" face to face contact in classrooms but
who have vast pools of expertise in teaching and learning to contribute,
part time, from their own homes.

Putting those together it seems
timely to build a research pilot that does the following, and does
it well:

Takes three cohorts of children, one in the 8-11
age range, one in the 11-14 age range and one in the 14+ age range
totalling 100 children.

Builds three "virtual
learning" for them with full support, curriculum
focus and activity in a way that the DFEE would regard as in line
with national priorities. We would introduce each "virtual
class" one term at a time - GCSE age last, probably
starting with the 11-14 year olds but having the complete community
on-line by the end of year one.

Use retired teachers (on limited bursaries) as
mentor / tutors in small but affordable ratios (1:4?) which offer
personal support for the students‚Äô ipsative
referencing of their own progress whilst offering broader expert
contributions in subject specialisms together with criterion referencing
of subject progress.

Gives each child and tutor the necessary hardware,
support, training and communication infrastructure.

Demonstrates cost effective quality learning outcomes.

Obviously there are many unanswered questions in
this short document but research questions to be addressed should
include:

The extent to which we can bring children back
into mainstream learning by the employment or HE stage, or provide
an alternative route to, for example, non standard HE delivery
or employment.

The extent to which we can use technology to offer
multiple media types so that our learners are not just text driven
(since we might assume that their exclusion has been reflected
in impaired textual prowess).

A careful and honest analysis of the model of cost
and returns with a view to illustrating viability.

The extent to which the different communities that
our students would be drawn from can make progress through the
virtual‚Äô nature of the school where they could
not progress with a conventional insitution, for whatever reasons.

I believe that the many agencies already concerned
with these school refusals, school phobics, school exclusions, children
in long term hospital care, profoundly physically impaired, etc will
be keen to assist. Certainly I already have solid feedback that suggests
real enthusiasm.

I have not enclosed a budget. I imagine a two year
project but with an option to extend to four years although we are
great believers here in producing useful feedback throughout a project,
rather than at the end. Certainly if the £20,000 figure
is realistic then it is clear that 100 for £1,000,000
including everything would be cheap and viable, which is only £10,000
per student. We should talk about this and it would be interesting
to consider the comparative budget for a school of 100 for example?
Anyway, what do you think?

Prof Stephen Heppell
Director, Ultralab

A lot of work
followed that year... by March 1998 I mailed this over to Rob Smith:

Rob,

subject: Virtual school for exclusions,
refusals, phobics, etc

The various responses I have had leave
me keen to move the "virtual school" idea
forward - we need to maintain some sort of impetus anyway and thus
I have completed two actions:

I have sounded out potential partners
- both Barnados as partners, Science Museum as part of the provision
team for example and everyone seems keen, perhaps from ministers
perspectives the media are excited by the whole idea too; clearly
visibility of the project (and thus a healthy Hawthorne Effect)
will not be a problem.

thus,
I have sought to put a bit of structure on the idea as below:

Timing,
scale and scope
I believe we can begin he project as soon as September
1998 if we move quickly. We should start with one group of 30 11-14
year olds, a mix of school refusals, school phobics, school exclusions,
children in long term hospital care, profoundly physically impaired.
10 of these should be of an age that places them within 2 years of
completing school.

Prof Stephen Heppell

By By July 1998 we had
a name - i'd purchased the web domain myself - wasn't sure at that stage
if this was a DFEE owned project or what, and the first meeting assembled.
The new website gave these details below - you can see how quickly the final
project was emerging (although we never did appoint an iJanitor...!):

What is it?

It is a proposed medium term research project
running out of Ultralab with a host of partners. NOTschool.NET is an on-line
virtual community of teenagers placed out of school for a mixture of reasons
with local clusters supported both electronically and face to face by teacher
facilitators at a ratio of 1:4. It must be totally seductive for all the
constituents. It needs to make thQem want to take part and to engage them
on a long term basis.

Why is it?

See some of the links we'll add from here
BUT reasons include the current DFEE and ministerial concerns about exclusions
/ truants / etc. Whilst some of these announcements have (rightly) focussed
on coercing some back to learning this project is focussed on seducing them
back to learning and reconises that there are many damaging reasons for children
to be out of school including for example long term health care.

Objectives

The principal objective is not to return the children to
school (although FE / HE are not excluded fxrom our Objectives) but:

students to raise their self esteem as learners. to pass some examinations - evidence
accredited learning (profile?). to build their capabilities a potential net
contributor to the UK economy. to enhance their ICT capability.

teacher facilitators to demonstrate an effective utilisation of the pool of non working QTA trained
professionals. to raise their self esteem as teachers . to enhance their
ICT capability.

Constituents

The children will be drawn from:

Long term hospital
care

Travellers

Exclutsions

Refusals

Phobics

Home care (medical)

Barnado nominees

Around 4 from each category in phase 1 pilot
(7x4=28).

Methodology

Pilot project is for 30 children in phase 1 in
11-14 age group (ideally 13) - for one term.

Second phase 100, including
30 11-14s from phase 1. No primary at this stage.

Each four students have
one 'facilitator' - a part time QTS who is retired or early retired or returning
(ideally).

The partners provide a channel to experts on-line on science
on ecology, music, modern language, what have you. A subset of NC stuff.

Identifying the teacher
mentors (vocabulary needed), etc from September '98

Preparatory Phase - September
- December 98

Phase 1 actual teaching / learning could start January 99?

Phase 2 post Easter 99? at any rate a term later than Phase
1 !

First published conclusions Jan 00

Curriculum and content

It
is not likely that we can (or should) cover the full spectrum of the curriculum.
Initial curriculum will be supported through the project partners, and will
err on the side of delight rather than prescription (with a challen%ge for
accrediation - see below).

Likely portfolio will include:

Literacy

Numeracy

Science

Environemtal Science

MFL

Graphic Art

ICT

Music

Technology

Because we are looking to build a powerful environment with
sound and video and other non textual cues and clues we will need to use
a common platform, ideally one that looks so seductive that there are some
self esteem gains right away. Suggestions at the moment are:

iMac

QuickCam
or similar

ISDN2 (installation and call plan (Oftel involvement) plus
router

plus 10/100baseT? Modem?)

uNet accounts

"Tesco" scanners.
Scanner printers?

Backup solution (remote? Timbucto?

Fast recovery of starting
position

Always remote storage of data, no local files except stuff
being worked on.

Sound input

Very large server at Ultralab + backup etc

Costs

The costs need to be measured against two things:

1 the actual
costs of these students' education outside of institutions (home tuition,etc)

2 the lifetime costs of their loss to the economy if the
pass compulsory school age with neither qualifications or the self esteem
to suggest that they might gain any in the future.

We do not intend in the
pilot to replace any of the tuition service provided. This is a pilot and
they are real students.

Evaluation

Each facilitator will also be an small
scale action researcher and this research will inform the project. There
will also be a full time research assistant.

Phase 1 evaluation will very
much focus on the practicalities of the pedagogic model adopted, the technology
and other organisational very short term issues. Phase 2 evaluation will
focus on outcomes in terms of the objectives above.

Literacy and Examinations

For many of these students notational literacy is an issue.
The mode of study is itself challenging for assessment models too. But it
is a clear objective that they will emerge with their learning accredited
in a way that enhances their self esteem as learners and their employment
prospects.

The intention is to involve QCA and an examination board
in bespoking the assessments to meet this challenge. The accreditation that
emerges must be acceptable to employers and a representative of the employment
sector needs to be represented in this Literacy and Examinations debate.

We may also add a special certificate of participation dependent
only on their regular involvement. (iNVQ?)

Legal

We need to be really clear that we have covered all
the statutory details / obligations / duties (in loc parentis etc)

iJanitor

We need a "quirky" character to inject and maintain interest
- thought needed about the nature of this "virtual" person.

So that was it - we came a very long way in 1998 and Notschool.net
was born.